Querencia: Crónicas de una latinoamericana en USA
Melanie Márquez Adams

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SPANISH

“Querencia describes a place where one feels safe, a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home. For writers, that burning urge to write is our querencia.  Writing is a way of finding and keeping our home.” With this inspiring epigraph and analogy of what it means to have a home and to exercise the arduous, sometimes painful, creative process of writing, is how the adventure of this Ecuadorian, born in the port city of Guayaquil and living in Nashville, Tennessee, begins. The clichés define this southern region of the United States as a place overflowing with country music, Dolly Parton, and gallons of whiskey. However, the author’s gaze goes beyond the stereotypes. 

​Querencia is a collection of personal essays written in fluid and crystalline prose. In the first part, the author narrates some of her most relevant experiences in the United States, with a gaze that focuses on moments and situations that move her. With a nimble, sharp pen, she describes and delves into characters like Lady in Black and her roommate Cindy, as well as the delights and wisdom provided by the mountains, bluegrass music, and a dog named Roscoe.

The second part: “Glossary of a #latinawriter in the USA,” opens with the chronicle of a fortuitous tornado in 2017 in Iowa City that seems to go unnoticed by most people. In this essay, the author explores the ambiguous classifications in the scattered world of contemporary Latin American literature in the United States as well as the complexities of literary workshops. Thus, we find a fragment in which the narrator sits down to drink a beer in one of the bars that surround the university after experiencing intense criticism of her work and ends up leaving “with the heaviest coat she’s ever had,” confronting the harsh winter weather of that place. Through her essays, Melanie Márquez Adams takes a careful look at the American social maelstrom.

Melanie Márquez Adams is the author of Querencia: Crónicas de una Latinoamericana en USA. She holds an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing from the University of Iowa where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her most recent fiction and nonfiction can be found in The Southern Review, Puerto del Sol, Spansglish Voces, and Huellas Magazine.

Querencia: Crónicas de una latinoamericana en USA (2020) was published by Katakana Editores.
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Reviewed by
Miriam Canales
​3/26/2022

Miriam Canales is a journalist and cultural promoter. Her work has been published in Milenio Diario, El Universal, Replicante, La Mosca en la Pared and the book 100 Essential Mexican Rock Records. She worked as a freelance UK correspondent in 2015 and contributes to various editorial projects. She also writes for the Ibero 90.9fm station website.

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